I had never heard of Hans-Joachim Richard Christoph (1903-1992), the graphic designer known as Hajo. Nor was there any reason I should have. He designed packages for a paper manufacturer and printer near Albany in the 1930s and ’40s, in the fashionable yet generic Art Moderne or Deco style of the period. One of many relatively anonymous commercial artists, he produced graphic design during the week and paintings on the weekends, neither resulting in much notoriety. Until now.

A few years ago his carefully preserved original and printed work was given by his son and daughter-in-law, Peter and Florence Christoph, to the Albany Institute of History and Art, which already had a few unique graphic design collections. Seeing the historical value, if not the artistic merit, in Christoph’s packages, point-of-purchase displays and advertisements, as well as his portfolios of paintings, prints and watercolors, the institute included his work in its current graphic design exhibition, “Graphic Design: Get the Message!” (until June 12) and a solo show, “Hajo: An Artist’s Journey” (until July 31).

What struck me when I saw Hajo’s lettering on boxes and packages was how beautifully made it was. Everything was rendered by hand (there were no computers then) and painted with gouache or drawn in ink — all so precise and pristine. For 34 years he worked at the Fort Orange Paper Company in Castleton, N.Y., designing packages for Borden, Tetley Tea and Freihofer’s bakery. He also designed dozens of toy and candy boxes and packages for the Embossing Company (a freelance client) and clothing labels for Kenwood Mills.

Hajo’s lettering and typographic work, produced from the ’30s through late ’40s, bears a striking similarity to contemporary retro lettering and type. But his style also reminded me of a better-known German poster artist, Lucian Bernhard, the “inventor” of the so-called object poster, with whom Hajo worked as an assistant in an office in the old New York Times Annex building. Hajo was a perfect fit for Bernhard, who in the 1920s introduced German graphic arts techniques to American companies and designed logos for Amoco Gas and Cat’s Paw.

In 1919, Hajo, who was born and raised in Berlin, apprenticed at the famous lithography and poster agency Hollerbaum & Schmidt, where Bernhard first worked in 1906. In 1921 Hajo studied at the Schule Reimann, one of the leading art schools in Germany, which specialized in the practical application of art for commercial and industrial needs. There he was taught to design posters and stage scenery. He later designed ads for a shoe company, but Germany’s accelerating inflation caused such instability that he had to leave.

By 1925, after arriving in the United States, Hajo went to work for Bernhard for $25 a week. From there he took a job at the Ferryman Art Studio designing performance backdrops and window displays. He later worked for the commercial artist Robert L. Leonard and taught a poster and advertising class at a night school on 42nd Street. In 1931, shortly after receiving American citizenship, Hajo was invited by Roy Latham, a printer who had promoted Bernhard’s work in the United States, to join the Fort Orange Paper Company, where he created some award-winning package designs.

By contemporary standards, Hajo’s design was consistent with the commercial methods of the time. However, his brush lettering was imbued with a flair and nuance that reflected both his German training and Bernhard’s influence. There are some gems in the exhibitions — which, while not necessarily making him a candidate for design history books, are certainly a pleasure to see for their examples of the designer’s skill. One is the Vim-Lax Minted Chewing Gum Laxative, which, with its abstract leafy design and bold streamline type, looks as though it were done today (in retro style, of course). Another is Line Up The Quinties!, a game that celebrated the Dionne quintuplets and came in a pink box with five perfectly drawn little baby face logos on the front cover — perfection!